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Maghrebim

Total population
c.2,000,000
Regions with significant populations
Israel 1,025,000  Brazil 450,000  United States 90,000  Canada 30,000  Morocco 40,000  Tunisia 10,000
Languages
Judeo-Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic.
Religion
Judaism
Related ethnic groups
Jews   • Maghrebim   • Mizrahi Jews   • Berber Jews   • Sephardi Jews

Maghrebim (מַגּרֶבִּים or מַאגרֶבִּים) are Jews who traditionally lived in the Arab-Berber Maghreb region of North Africa (al-Maghrib, Arabic for "the west"), established Jewish communities long before the arrival of Jews expelled from Spain (see Alhambra decree), mainly in the Sherifian kingdom of Morocco.

The term Maghrebim is formed analogously to Ashkenazim and Sephardim. The Sephardi population in Maghreb was urbanised and wealthier, so most Maghrebim chose to assimilate into the Sephardic Jewish community. Today most of Moroccan Jews consider themselves to be Sephardi.

"Cave-dwelling Jews" of southern Tripolitania, whose fate is uncertain after 1960, were probably an early and isolated offshoot of Maghrebim.

The relationship with the Sunni Muslim majority has suffered in recent years as Arab hostilities engendered by the Arab-Israeli conflict have worsened relations between Arabs and Jews throughout the Arab and Muslim world.

[edit] See also

• History of the Jews in Algeria
• History of the Jews of Bilad el-Sudan
• History of the Jews in Libya
• History of the Jews in Morocco
• History of the Jews in Tunisia
• Jews and Judaism in Africa
• Jewish ethnic divisions
• Mizrahi Jews
• Berber Jews
• El Ghriba synagogue
• Djerba

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